We've written about this kind of work before, specifically the research into optogenetics, which allows scientists to genetically-engineer light-sensitive reactions in animals or plants. What's different about this nematode experiment, however, is that no genetic engineering was involved - the little worm just ate a small amount of a chemical (basically the equivalent of popping a pill).

According to National Geographic:

After feeding a light-sensitive chemical to transparent, microscopic worms called nematodes, scientists at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia were able to paralyze the tiny creatures by exposing them to UV light. The paralysis works because UV light changes the structure of the ingested chemical, called dithienylethene.

Upon UV exposure, the normally clear chemical turns blue, and it shuts down the worms' metabolism, said study co-author Neil R. Branda. A shot of visible light restored the worms to normal, and the animals slowly began to wiggle around "as if they had never been paralyzed," the study authors say.

Will we be seeing the equivalent kinds of experiments taking place with humans? Yes indeed, though not for paralyzing people. Researchers are interested in light-activated medicines, which only get activated when exposed to light. This would allow doctors to activate drugs in very precise places in your body.

via NatGeo (thanks to Marilyn Terrell)

The Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Elizabeth Blackburn, an Australian-American, with the Physics Prize being awarded to Canadian-American Willard Boyle and British-American Charles Kao. The Chemistry Prize was shared between Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz and Israel's Ada E. Yonath.

Since 1985, Americans have dominated the science prizes, winning the Chemistry prize all but two years, the Medicine prize all but five years, and the Physics prize all but seven. Scientists are arguing that such results prove the need of government funding for long-term projects that may not show immediate return on investment; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences' Dr. Jeremy Berg cited Yonath's research as a good example of the kind of thing the government should be involved in:

I remember at the time being just completely stunned that she was somewhere between brave enough and crazy enough and because it was way, way, way beyond the technology available at that point... But it was seen as certainly completely unique and something potentially so important that it should be funded.

Nobel prize shows need for funding - scientists [Reuters]

Said chemist Hideaki Chihara, "A novel substance is either isolated or synthesized every 2.6 seconds on the average during the past 12 months, day and night, seven days a week in the world, showing an almost unbelievable rate of progress in science."

This annuncement also underscores the rather alarming fact that there are a lot more chemicals than these "publicly disclosed" 50 million out there, but the public will never know about about them because they're classified, or perhaps trade secrets.

Creators of apocalyptic scenarios take note: Obviously the population crash will be brought about by one of these secret substances, not one of the well-catalogued ones. Or will it? Can it be that out of 50 million publicly-disclosed substances available in this catalog, there isn't a single one that can turn me into a giant wasp?

via American Chemical Society

Back in the good old days, kids inhaled nitrous oxide out of whip cream canisters without a care in the world. But, according to geochemist A.R. Ravishankara, "manmade nitrous oxide is now the elephant in the room among ozone-depleting substances." It causes more ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere than any other form of emission - and according to the atmospheric models created by Ravishankara and his team, the gas is likely to linger in the atmosphere for the rest of the century.

According to their study, nitrous oxide is dangerous because it comes from natural sources as well as human-made ones:

Nitrous oxide is emitted from livestock manure, sewage treatment, combustion and certain other industrial processes. Dentists use it as a sedative (so-called "laughing gas"). In nature, bacteria in soil and the oceans break down nitrogen-containing compounds, releasing nitrous oxide. About one-third of global nitrous oxide emissions are from human activities. Nitrous oxide, like chlorofluorocarbons, is stable when emitted at ground level, but breaks down when it reaches the stratosphere to form other gases, called nitrogen oxides, that trigger ozone-destroying reactions.

So now you know. Every hit you take on that nitrous cracker is killing the Earth.

via Science

Image via CelebrateNothing.

Imagine a 10-centimeter cube that weighs 130 tons and is more dense than the core of the sun. Ultra-dense deuterium is just that heavy. Here you can see the facility where chemists are experimenting with the material, which they have managed to create in microscopic amounts at the University of Gothenburg. Deuterium atoms are packed together so tightly that they create an "ultra-dense" material.

When that material is heated up with lasers, those atoms fuse together and release a tremendous amount of energy. Also, according to researcher Lief Holmlid:

We believe that we can design the deuterium fusion such that it produces only helium and hydrogen as its products, both of which are completely non-hazardous. It will not be necessary to deal with the highly radioactive tritium that is planned for use in other types of future fusion reactors, and this means that laser-driven nuclear fusion as we envisage it will be both more sustainable and less damaging to the environment than other methods that are being developed.

My main question is: How can this be a renewable energy source if you still need lots of energy to create the ultra-dense deuterium and power up those lasers?

Cool fact: Scientists believe ultra-dense deuterium is naturally occurring on Jupiter. Time to get those orbital mines in shape.

via University of Gothenberg

Zoellner has put together a fun and informative tale of humankind's interactions with one of the earth's most terrifying and wonderful elements, including some interesting insights into uranium that go far beyond its use in nuclear warheads.

Zoellner explains that uranium was discovered in the ancient world, but was thrown out as a tailing from silver mining. It wasn't until the eighteenth century that any practical use for uranium was discovered, when it was used as an agent to color glass. In 1789, a chemist named Martin Klaproth formally discovered the properties of Uranium, naming it after a recently discovered planet in the solar system. But in 1896 that the destructive properties of the element were named, by a science fiction writer named Herbert George Wells, who came up with a story called "The World Set Free," featuring an element that when broken apart, yielded an incredible amount of energy. He had inadvertently predicted just what uranium would be known for, a few short decades later.

But uranium wasn't seen as a harmful substance when first examined, although the properties of radiation were discovered early on by chemist Henry Becuquerel, when the element began to cloud his photographs, even out of the sunlight. His discoveries would attract another pair of scientists, Marie Sklodowska and Pierre Curie, who would eventually marry. They began to examine uranium and theorized that it was an element that was throwing off particles. In 1903 the two were awarded the Nobel Prize when they discovered that the radiation had the ability to heal, shrinking tumors. In light of these successes, a small industry of health spas sprang up where radium springs were located. These spas touted the healing properties of radiation. However, both Marie and Pierre Curie, after their long exposure to radiation, would perish from the very substance that they believed would heal the world.

From this point onwards, uranium's interaction with humanity was composed of blood and fire. More scientists began to examine the element, and by the early 1930s, a scientist named Leo Szilard discovered the framework of a chain reaction that could be fueled by uranium. Disturbed by the trends in Europe, he contacted noted physicist Albert Einstein a couple years later while in the United States, and the two of them urged President Franklin Roosevelt to examine the possibility of harnessing the power of the atom. The rest is history, and Zoellner goes into great detail into the workings of the Manhattan project that would later yield two warheads, both of which would be dropped over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, helping to end the Second World War in the Pacific Ocean.

The history of uranium is a complicated one, going from mining refuse to a health treatment to the atomic bomb before finally evolving towards a peaceful use in the production of nuclear power. Zoellner examines much of this in detail, leading up to the present day, with multiple nations in possession of nuclear warheads, while others desperately seek weapons of their own.

Still others seek the cheap and relatively safe applications for uranium as a power supply that might help their economies grow. Zoellner is clearly in support of the continued use of nuclear power and the uranium that fuels it. One of the most immediate practical parts of the book is a section where he examines what would be needed for nuclear power to continue on all levels, from security to mining to the technology that helps make it a reality.

The book is not without serious flaws, however. While there is much attention paid to the United States, the coverage is very uneven. We learn about exploration and mining in Australia, Soviet work camps in Eastern Europe, the efforts of Iran and Iraq, Israel and Pakistan's nuclear programs and a couple others. But crucial players in nuclear power are largely ignored, such as the United Kingdom and France. And the Soviet Union, a major player in the world when it comes to nuclear arms, gets little play. This is despite the fact that the nuclear arms race between the USSR and the United States entirely shaped our modern world and many people's understanding of nuclear capabilities.

Oddly, Cuba is never mentioned, and the Cold War is pushed to the side, as if uranium's significant impact on the world would be tarnished by its involvement. Indeed, the book feels sometimes a bit dogmatic in its promotion of nuclear technology, simply because we never really hear much about the arguments against it. There is little talk about Three mile Island or Chernobyl, some of the worst disasters in the civilian world, events that have relevance to today. Nor is there much talk about the disposal of nuclear waste, such as the proposed facility at Yucca Mountain. It would have helped to have a sense of what kinds of security would be required to dispose of such waste, as well as what would be needed to restart nuclear programs around the world. And finally, it would have been helpful to have a listing environmental organizations that have come around on the issue.

Nevertheless, Zoellner makes a very good argument for nuclear power. When it's not going wrong, it helps to provide a lot of power in the United States. This is of particular interest to me personally, as here in Vermont, there is significant public debate over the fate of our own aging nuclear power plant, Yankee Power, which seems to be in the news frequently for something falling apart. In his championing of nuclear power, Zoellner goes the same route as science fiction writers: He imagines a nuclear world is potentially a good one, with cheap power to grow the economy and reduce pollution (and in this day and age, with climate change in the headlines, it would seem to be a good argument). But with little counter argument against the darker sides of the technology, I can't help but feel that I'm reading a book written by lobbyists for the pro-nuclear side of things.

In 2003, I read Charles Sheffield's last short story, "The Waste Land," a mystery set in a nuclear dumping ground, where a scientist is found dead from a massive dose of radiation. In the end, it turns out that the scientist has found a way to accelerate the half-life of nuclear materials, shortening it to a short burst, and ended up being killed because his scheme would eradicate trillions of dollars of contracts for the waste disposal industry. I found the story fascinating because it suggests that there may always be problems with nuclear power, despite all of its advantages. No matter what happens, we do know one thing. This rock will linger for years and years after we're all gone, an interesting, if somewhat hazardous legacy of our time on Earth.

You can pick up a copy of Uranium via Amazon.

Enriched Uranium image from About.com

Developed by a research team in Japan, this method of magnifying the nanoverse is called Synchrotron Radiation Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy. Testing was a joint effort of the University of Hyogo and the KEK Photon Factory (best name evar). How does it work? According to Physics World:

It involves placing a sample of interest in the intense x ray beam of a synchrotron source.

Photons from the beam excite core electrons in the sample's atoms, which then spit out "secondary" electrons as they decay back down to their ground states. These secondary electrons are then detected by the tip of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) as they tunnel across the gap. The size of the current depends on the specific type of atom that has produced the secondary electrons, which means that each element has a unique "fingerprint."

I just want to know why the STM is covered in tinfoil. Or whatever that puffy, shiny stuff is. Also, that is seriously the coolest lab picture ever. Tangled wires! X-rays shooting everywhere! Hopefully somebody will get superpowers out of this.

via Physics World

Yesterday at the Etech Conference in San Jose, chemist Christa Hockensmith explained how she got interested explosion science, and what researchers at the cutting edge are doing to make exothermic reactions work for you.

Hockensmith runs the chemistry lab at New Mexico Tech's Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC), an enormous, outdoor facility in Socorro, NM, where researchers have the space to test massive explosions in relative safety. The innovations that come out of Hockensmith's chemistry research are all eventually turned into giant balls of fire and tremendous shockwaves in the mountains above her lab.

Often, explosion science starts with a specific question from a company or research lab. "Somebody will call me on the phone and say, 'Can you help me with this?'" Hockensmith said, then added with a laugh, "And of course if they have the money, we always do." Often companies will partner with EMRTC, sponsoring research that's relevant to products they create. Recently, a company came to Hockensmith asking whether she could create an "explosive-aided polymer." The company makes chemicals that are used in industrial manufacturing, but those chemicals must be encased in a protective polymer shell until the exact moment they are needed. So Hockensmith and her team created a way to set off a tiny, focused explosion that would crack the polymer shell at the instant that the chemical is added to the manufacturing process.

They also created a similar kind of explosion for use in plastic containers for medical supplies. She explained:

Shipping containers for medical supplies are often plastic, and get deformed in the shipping process. So we put small explosive charge in them which creates enough inert gas to reshape the container. A filter protects the medical supplies from contamination, and the inert gas prevents leakage and loss of sterility.

And then there are the untested ideas that Hockensmith is just starting to think about, like how extremely tiny explosions at the molecular level might be used in medical research. She mused:

We make almost 200,000 industrial diamonds per year with explosions, so what why not work on tiny explosions that could destroy tumors, or unblock arteries? We could actually make them implosions, so that they wouldn't cause bleeding.

EMRTC, where Hockensmith works, is trying to get young people interested in the science of explosions, too. For the first time this year they'll be offering "Explosives Camp" for high schoolers interested in pursuing science and engineering topics related to explosions. Explosives Camp will run from June 21-28 this summer at New Mexico Tech. If you want more information, you can mail the camp directors.

Lewis Casey, an 18-year-old in Saskatchewan, had built a small chemistry lab in his family's garage near the university where he studies. Then two weeks ago, police arrived at his home with a search warrant and based on a quick survey of his lab determined that it was a meth lab. They pulled Casey out of the shower to interrogate him, and then arrested him.

A few days later, police admitted that Casey's chemistry lab wasn't a meth lab - but they kept him in jail, claiming that he had some of the materials necessary to produce explosives. Friends and neighbors wrote dozens of letters to the court, testifying that Casey was innocent and merely a student who is really enthusiastic about chemistry.

On December 24, Casey was finally released into his parents' custody, pending a trial to determine whether he was building what police called "improvised explosive devices." Yesterday Casey's lawyer told local journalists:

My client is a very intelligent young man . . . he's very keen in chemistry, a very curious young person and very capable, very knowledgeable in the area and he was always curious with regard to chemistry, chemical compounds, chemical reactions, that kind of thing. So from my client's point of view, it's completely innocent insofar as he had no intention of creating any explosives or explosive devices. As people probably know, anything in your house can constitute or be used in chemical or explosive devices, including sugar and cleaning compounds, Mr. Clean, bleach, detergents, all those sorts of things.

It's unclear what made police raid Casey's house. They claim that they got a tip from a woman who sold Casey fertilizer and was concerned about it. Certain kinds of fertilizer are used in the production of crystal meth.

The case is reminiscent of the Steve Kurtz case in 2004. Kurtz is a New York artist who uses biotech equipment in his work, and police arrested him on suspicion of terrorism after discovering his home chemistry lab.

Casey is now living at home, but he is no longer allowed to engage in chemistry experiments except under supervision in school labs. He is also required to inform the chemistry department of the charges against him. His trial continues on January 26.

This is a stark example of how scientific curiosity is still regarded with suspicion - even in an era where home labs are becoming more and more common. Good luck to Casey - let's hope his next home lab is even bigger and cooler than the one he recently lost.

The molecule is glycolaldehyde, the simplest monosaccharide sugar, which can react with propenal to form ribose, which is, in turn, the central component of RNA. Researchers believe that glycolaldehyde may be a key ingredient in the origin of life, but it has previously been detected only toward the center of our galaxy, where conditions make the formation of life unlikely.

The discovery of glycolaldehyde in a star-forming region of our galaxy, roughly 26,000 light years from Earth, suggests that the molecule could prove to be wide spread throughout the galaxy, and could offer clues as to where we should focus our search for extraplanetary life.

Image from NASA via Universe Today.

[Physorg via Universe Today]

Let's get a few possible misconceptions out of the way first. The Princeton group, composed of researchers Raj Chakrabarti, Herschel Rabitz, Stacey Springs and George McLendon, haven't proven that intelligent design is a valid scientific theory. Nor are they claiming that DNA is making a set of conscious decisions about growing extra legs or wings (though that would admittedly be cool).

What they are saying is that evolution is not entirely random, as Darwin believed. The researchers were tinkering with a set of proteins forming the electron transport chain, a system that regulates energy use in cells. They discovered that the proteins were correcting any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations, constantly restoring the chain to working order. A mathematical analysis revealed that these proteins seem to make these minute corrections all the time, steering organisms toward evolutionary changes that make the creature fitter.

Said Chakrabarti:

The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'? Our new theory extends Darwin's model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness.

Their work seems to confirm ideas held by Darwin's colleague Alfred Wallace, who co-discovered the theory of evolution. Wallace believed that life forms undergoing natural selection could adjust their evolutionary course "exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident." In other words: Wallace believed that organisms had a kind of evolutionary feedback control mechanism.

Added Rabitz:

What we have found is that certain kinds of biological structures exist that are able to steer the process of evolution toward improved fitness. The data just jumps off the page and implies we all have this wonderful piece of machinery inside that's responding optimally to evolutionary pressure.

The researchers put together a paper recently published in Physical Review Letters, which suggests that control theory could help explain evolution. This is likely to spark a lot of debate. But Chakrabarti says their ideas fit neatly within theories of evolution:

Biological change is always driven by random mutation and selection, but at certain pivotal junctures in evolutionary history, such random processes can create structures capable of steering subsequent evolution toward greater sophistication and complexity.

In other words, organisms are evolving ways to evolve better.

Evolution's New Wrinkle [via Princeton University]

Researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have been experimenting with ways to create lab-grown diamonds from organic solutions. In determining what compounds are ideal for creating diamonds, they realized that the proportions of chemicals are similar to those in tequila:

According to PhysOrg:

"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," [Luis Miguel] Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."

And, as much as tequila diamonds sound like a novelty (and are bound to inspire a lot of jokes about alch-emy), the discovery could greatly improve the industrial production of hard, heat-resistant diamond films. The research team is currently looking to contract with a tequila producer and plans to start large-scale production of its agave-derived diamonds in 2011.

Scientists Turn Tequila into Diamonds [PhysOrg]

The "brainbow," with its dozens of glowing colors, was created when scientists mixed a few of the primary colors available from fluorescent jellyfish proteins (green isn't the only one). They wound up with nearly 100 colors, and used them to tag neurons in the brain so that they could follow the complicated interlinking pathways of each neuron and see the neurological structures of a mouse brain.

Early experiments with GFP created mice like these, which express the glowing green gene in all their cells — not just neurons. The result is a mouse that glows just like a jellyfish.

Usually, however, scientists link GFP with another gene — if the creature they've engineered emerges glowing like these monkeys, they know the linked gene is active too. These monkeys were engineered to have the gene for Huntington's Disease, and the gene was tagged with GFP. Because they glow, researchers are certain they have the sought-after gene and can study the monkeys to figure out possible cures for this neurodegenerative disorder.

Chemistry Nobel for Green Jellyfish Protein [New Scientist]

Nobel Prize for Chemistry Illuminates Disease [UK Guardian]

The prizes were awarded in a ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater in ten areas:

• Nutrition: Massimiliano Zampini and Clark Spence for demonstrating that, when the sound of eating a potato chip is modified, the eater believes the chip is fresher and crisper than it really is.
• Peace: The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.
• Archeology: Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino for demonstrating how the actions of an armadillo may scramble the contents of an archeological dig site.
• Biology: Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc for discovering that fleas on a dog jump higher than fleas on a cat.
• Medicine: Dan Ariely for demonstrating the high-cost placebos are more effective than low-cost placebos.
• Cognitive Science: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero, Akio Ishiguro, and Agota Toth for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.
• Economics: Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur, and Brent Jordan for discovering that a lap dancer’s ovulatory cycle affects the tips she earns.
• Physics: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith for mathematically proving that a heap of hair or string will inevitably tangle itself into knots.
• Chemistry: Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill, and Deborah J. Anderson for demonstrating that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and Chuang-Ye Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang for discovering that Coca-Cola is not an effective spermicide.
• Literature: David Sims for his study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations.”

The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Winners [Improbable Research]

With over a hundred videos to choose from, there are going to be plenty of highlights to choose from. Make sure you hit the explosive vids (as noted above), as well as Mercury and Helium — no bangs there, but with Hg, Peter License talks about how he used to "play football (soccer) with it with our fingers back in school. We don't do that now because we care about our safety."

Take some time and noodle around through this awesome treasure trove of video chemistry, and whenever you find Peter License (he of the cackling) with a matchstick in his hand, you know a ball of fire is soon to follow. That's usually spliced in with Martyn Poliakoff soothingly delivering interesting tidbits about whatever element you're watching.

Source: The Periodic Table of Videos, via Creative Synthesis

ESA scientists are currently testing intermetallic materials, combinations of metal similar to alloys in which two or more metals are diffused together on a molecular level. Titanium aluminide is an intermetal that could cut the weight of fan blades in jet engines by half. Unfortunately, titanium aluminide tends to fail under high temperatures. This can be solved by introducing small amounts of other materials, such as niobium. In Earth gravity, weight differences between the different metals makes it difficult to get them to diffuse properly.

Small-scale tests in rockets have shown that zero-g solves many of the issues with intermetallic production. The ESA will run larger tests over longer periods of time in the new Columbus science module on the ISS. These space metals could revolutionize the aerospace industry. Photo by: NASA.

'Space metals' aid perfection quest. [BBC]

The usual Scoville test involves diluting a sauce until taste testers can't detect heat anymore — the amount required to dilute it gives it a rating on the Scoville Scale. Chromatography can give you an accurate reading of capsaicinoids, but it's neither cheap nor easy. The new test uses carbon nanotube electrodes to draw in capsaicin molecules, which have a unique electrochemical response. When the capsaicinoids react, the device measures the current change and determines exactly how many were present. It can even translate this number into Scoville Units.

While the developers think this will be very useful in the food industry, where it can be deployed right on the production line, I've got a better idea. We can use it to develop a hot sauce so intense that we can cover our bodies with it to protect us from hungry robots. Image by: Viewoftheworld.

Chemists Measure Chilli Sauce Hotness With Nanotubes. [Science Daily]

Here you can see pictures taken by Tony Travouillon of giant chunks of ice in Antarctica that have been sculpted by the wind to look like huge waves erupting out of the ground.

You can see more beautiful ice bubbles here and here.

Cranberry Lake photo via BLDGBLOG and New Scientist. Antarctic wave via Travouillon's website.

At the Astrobiology Science Conference 2008 that wrapped up yesterday, chemist Steve Benner proposed that formamide might make a great solvent for life with some bizarre biochemistry that mimics our DNA, but in a way we can only imagine. Benner's a great speaker and scientist, but has a tendency to lapse into flights of chemical minutia, so I'll take a page from a New Scientist feature in June that aptly sums up the point:

A suitable solvent is only part of the story of life, of course. Apart from a few viruses, all life on Earth uses deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) to encode the information needed to build and run an organism. But is there an alternative? Could genetic information be stored another way?

DNA consists of a double helix, like a twisted ladder. Every rung of the ladder comprises a pair of molecules called bases. These bases are the part of DNA that actually encode the genes. There are four types, known by the initials G, A, C and T, and they form the alphabet of every genetic code. The struts of the ladder consist of deoxyribose sugars linked by charged phosphate groups.

Biologists have methodically altered different parts of the DNA molecule to explore which aspects of its structure are necessary for it to function properly. They have identified several parts that can be changed without disrupting the molecule. For example, you can replace deoxyribose with another sugar, such as threose. Different and more molecules can be used to represent the bases too.
DNA disaster

But that's where the known options end, says Steven Benner, a synthetic biologist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida. Benner has found that replacing the phosphate groups with uncharged substitutes brings disaster. The DNA strand becomes unstable, collapses into a ball and sinks to the bottom of his experimental solution like dregs in a beer keg.

Before these experiments, people wondered why the phosphates were there - whether they were simply a redundant evolutionary artefact, rather like a male nipple. It's now clear that they serve a vital function. The charges keep DNA stiff by organising a cradle of water molecules along its chain; without them, DNA easily wads into a ball - another demonstration of how water is integral to life as we know it. An alien's DNA equivalent in ammonia or methane, say, would therefore need some very different structures to avoid rolling up. Those charged phosphates might have to be replaced by something greasier, like hydrocarbon or benzene molecules, says Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard University.

Source: original reporting, New Scientist (sub required)

Image: ufocasebook.com

In March 2006, researcher Stefan Kruszewski wrote in The American Journal of Psychiatry:

Modanifil is reinforcing, as evidenced by its self-administration in monkeys previously trained to self-administer cocaine.

Modafinil and cocaine dose-dependently increased heart rate and blood pressure. The results of the present study suggest that modafinil has minimal abuse potential, but should be viewed cautiously because of the relatively small sample size. Future studies should further characterize the abuse potential of modafinil using other behavioral arrangements, such as drug discrimination or drug self-administration. A full characterization of the abuse potential of modafinil will become important as the use of this drug increases.

In early trials, several candidate medications—bupropion, modafinil, and, to a lesser extent, baclofen—have shown promise in treating aspects of methamphetamine dependence, including aiding memory function necessary to more effectively participate in and benefit from behavioral therapies.